Living in Crete. A Guide to Living, Working, Retiring & Buying Property in Crete

Carol Palioudaki

When
you’re exploring the idea of retiring abroad, living
in another country, or even spending some extended time
there, what you need is a guide. Someone who knows it
inside out, has spent years dealing with the intricacies
of its culture and can tell you where the potential pitfalls
are, and how to make the system work for you, is Carol
Palioudaki.

Travel through Zorba the Greek Country

take
one look at Samaria Gorge... and you instantly realise that...
Zorba the Greek could only have come from Crete

Of
all the islands in the Aegean, Greece’s millpond-calm sea, studded
with largely unspoilt tourist magnets, Crete holds a special place.
It could be its colourful history. It is famed in Greek mythology, for
the demi-god, Theseus, slew the Minotaur (half-man, half-bull) with
the help of Ariadne (daughter of the king of Knossos). In more contemporary
times, the Cretan resistance wrote volumes of heroism during the island’s
involvement in the second World War. It could be the allure of its archaeology
(the Minotaur may be mythical but the palace at Knossos actually exists),
or it could be the combination of wild mountains and calm seas that
form its landscape.

The attraction is felt by more than half a million visitors each year
who, outnumbering the island’s population by about two to one,
visit their favourite haunts again and again, becoming, in the process,
honorary Cretans rather than tourists.

Enter
into Chania, one of the island’s largest cities, and in the most
probable place you’ll disembark you’ll be surprised by two
things: its size (much larger than you’d expect) and the mind-blowing
combination of rugged mountains in the background and wine-calm sea
in its harbour and many scenic beaches.

This is a tale that’s repeated every time you strike out in Crete.
The mountains are rugged beyond belief. The beaches appear unspoilt.
You take one look at Samaria Gorge (which can be traversed with the
help of a guide and his train of donkeys – or, for the more hardy,
on your own - and you instantly realise the larger-than-life character
played by Anthony Quinn in Zorba the Greek could only have come from
Crete.

Cretans are fiercely proud of their island and its history that dates
back to the Phoenician times in 800BC, but they’re also incredibly
welcoming and go to great lengths to make visitors feel at home. Whilst,
obviously, much of the island’s income comes from tourism, Crete
is large enough and rich enough to not rely entirely on visitors; so
when Cretans go to seemingly extraordinary lengths to make you feel
at home it’s because they genuinely like you and want to impress
you with the tradition of their hospitality rather than because they’re
after your money.

I have friends who were offered the loan of a taverna-owner’s
car when they couldn’t find transport, and the number of instances
when Cretans have helped tourists find accommodation, food, or simply
an out-of-the-way beach, are too numerous to mention.

This is a place which, while feeling fully integrated into Europe (internet
cafés abound and there are few places on the island where your
mobile phone will be out of reach of a signal), it is still safe enough
for locals to leave their front doors unlocked and for visitors to come
back to their unattended towels on the beach and find their mobile phones
and digital cameras (left in plain view) still there.

It’s little wonder that so many of them, each year, decide to
sell-up back home and settle permanently on the island. Of course, no
such move is ever culture-shock-free, and this is probably more true
for Crete than most places.

While many Cretans speak English (and French and German), the island’s
incredibly long history makes for a culture that’s multi-layered
and hard to penetrate – at least initially. Add to this a level
of bureaucracy that even native Cretans hate, and the fact that the
language of officialdom is Greek, and you begin to realise that a love
affair with the island must be deep indeed to go the distance.

That so many expatriates decide it’s worth the trouble speaks
volumes about the island’s incredible beauty and its ability to
work its magic upon its visitors. I was one of these expats who, eighteen
years ago, was just one of many island-struck backpackers coming off
the boat from Athens (the capital of Greece) to check out the island
famous in so many tales.

I married into a Cretan family and now, the mother of two, I think
I am a living testament to the island’s allure. Emigrate here
and you consciously give up a certain way of life back home, but the
compensations make it more than worth it. This is a place where children
can grow up in complete safety, where the past is never far from the
present, and where history makes itself felt in almost everything you
do.

To
step onto the island is unlike anything you’ve experienced. The
Crete of today is as much a magical amalgam of past and present as it
ever was and just a few hours spent walking the narrow streets of the
old part of Chania are enough to strip away the façade of modernity
and bring back to life larger-than-life heroes and colourful characters.
There is a zest for living here that instantly transports you into the
heart of Zorba the Greek, and explains why Crete is still called the
island of dreams.

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